Blackthorne University
by Snake over Water
Summary: Education does not end at 17, and the struggles of Dark and Light do not end with the defeat of Voldemort.  Life is a struggle at Blackthorne University, America's oldest institution of higher magical education.  High Magic, Dark, History, Sex and Death.
1. Prologue

Prologue

The young wizard produced a small phial from the sleeve of his robe. The glass container was housed in a cage of silver filigree, hardened by subtle magics and locked to any who lacked the password. The only hint of sorcery was the way the metal gleamed softly, even in perfect darkness.

Michael raised the phial to his lips and whispered, "Civitate dei." The silver cage released with a soft clack. The wizard retrieved the stoppered glass container from within. Inside, a pointy piece of bone floated at middle height in cloudy water. A pinky bone – the rightmost distal phalange of a deceased human.

Necromancy itself was not strictly forbidden at Blackthorne, Michael reflected. Here in the cellars below the cathedral, the thick stone walls had been impregnated with unrefined salt and powdered rust from coffin nails – proof against all but the most malevolent spirits and revenants.

Taking his wand in hand, it took the young wizard three tries to wrap the bone in a thin stream of magical energy – it kept stubbornly slipping free of its own will. Finally he was able to levitate the little bone over a silver bowl of water. When he released it, the small shard slipped below the surface without a splash, and floated at middle depth rather than sank. A soft white light glimmered off the silver walls of the bowl.

In theory, Michael thought, it should behave exactly like a pensieve. Not that he'd ever used one, of course, but any student of magical history worth their wand should be able to recall at least three instances out of hand upon which a pensieve was used as evidence before the Wizengamot. Most recently, the posthumus exoneration of Professor Severus Snape of Hogwarts following that failed coup d'état in Britain came to mind.

Raising his wand once more, Michael extinguished the candles in their sconces along the stone walls of the little chamber. As he removed his glasses, he noticed that his hands were shaking. He took a breath to still himself, and whispered, "A true scholar ventures forth without fear in the realm of the mind." Closing his eyes, he lowered his face into the silver basin.

The water never seemed to touch his skin, yet he felt a sensation at once both warm and cold against his skin. The soft silvery light seemed visible even through his eyelids. A doorway appeared before his mind's eye – an ancient wooden door set in stone, with a ring rather than handle or knob. Understanding at once, he took hold of the ring and pulled the door open inward. Cold white light flooded through, setting his head ablaze with pain. Michael screamed.


	2. Olivia

Olivia

Olivia felt foolish in her Muggle clothes, despite happily donning them at any given chance in the past. Here in the wide, pillared atrium of Heathrow International Flooport, however, she felt entirely out of place amidst the swish and swirl of so many traditional black robes. She smoothed her skirt and self-consciously fidgeted with her tie – Slytherin green, of course, pleated into a gorgeously symmetrical Windsor knot. It was far too wide for this collar, of course, but that was the point, wasn't it? Open defiance in every small way possible, down to the purple laces on her distinctly non-uniform knee-high World War II steel-reinforced American military-issue paratrooper's boots. Très chic, they were the pièce de résistance. Underground résistance.

"Mum, I get the Muggle clothes, really I do, but couldn't I at least have a robe over them?"

Her mother regarded her critically, clearly uncertain as to whether she shared Liv's assessment of "getting it."

"Really, dear? As an international student, serving as an informal ambassador to a whole teeming college of magical colonial brats, and a model of Britain to all those you meet who've only seen us in movies about kings and castles, you assure me, quite confidently, I note, that you 'get it'? No, you can't wear the robe: you'll come out wandering through an international airport looking like a weirdo, talking like a foreigner, and then they see you with a wand – which, I note, you refuse to keep away from Muggle sight – and they'll swear you're a terrorist with a bomb, ship you off to prison in Cuba, and then your father and I will have to claim we've never met you or risk starting a new Transatlantic War or something. So no, I don't think the robe will really fly."

This was just begging for the world's longest eyeroll. Liv did her best not to disappoint.

"Well I'm sorry to have traumatized you yet again, Liv, but you didn't listen the first two times I said no, and anyway your therapist's been looking a bit lean lately, so I thought he might need a bit of extra work, what with the recession on and all. – Oh! Here we are, A 34, Logan International – Departures."

Her mother rummaged in a tiny mokeskin pouch as they came to a stop. A line of witches and wizards, most in sleek urban-cut business robes, was queued up before an immense hearth filled with green flames. A brass plaque above read, "A 34 – Now Open for Departures." Travellers started to move forward as a velvet rope before the fireplace was retracted by an elderly goblin in an unobtrusive navy blue uniform.

Olivia found a parchment being stuffed into her hand, followed shortly after by another.

"Now, the first one's your pass, there you are, and the second's to retrieve your luggage – don't lose that, you'll miss your knickers once you can't change them for a week or so," her mother was saying. "There now, ready? Say hi to your Aunt Susan for me. I'll miss you. I really am proud, you know."

"Yes, Mum," Liv answered, her face wearing a sweet smile. "I know. I'll miss you, too."

Her mother embraced her, then stepped back, held her daughter out at arm's length, smiled, and drew away after one last look. Liv didn't see her look back once as she made her way back down the length of the terminal. Ahead, the queue was growing shorter every moment as people stepped into the weird green flames. She'd travelled by floo before, certainly, but never across this great a distance. She'd heard about the risks, as well. There could be a backup in the network where you were stuck in a dank, sooty nowhere-space for hours, even a day or more as you waited for the traffic controllers to sort it all out and find you an exit – that only really happened over the holidays on Transatlantic trips like these, of course. You could be misrouted, too – it didn't happen often, but once in a while you could come out into the lobby of a hotel or someone's house if there had been a mistake when your pass was written out.

Those sorts of things happened to other people, though, Liv reflected, and not all that often. Then again, to everyone else, Liv _was_ other people. Still, it wasn't best to worry about things like that, not right in the moment. The most likely mishap was that her luggage might be delayed or misrouted. The chests that made up the majority of wizarding luggage on international trips like this were routed through a separate floo connection, loaded into a freight-sized fireplace somewhere below the terminal, escorted by somebody – goblins, she guessed – since floo powder was made for transporting people rather than for things. If you were willing to pay the extra price, you could have your chest (or cabinet, if that's what sort of person you were) shipped ahead of you by about a week or so, sometimes even to your own residence. Then the house elves would take it and put it in whatever room you'd be heading up to. Not that Liv's parents had felt like paying for that kind of service for their college-bound daughter. She had to get the _practical experience_ of travelling by mass floo, having her luggage hauled away by goblins she'd never be able to recognize again later, and she'd heard they just sort of threw them onto the carts, and god only knew whether her warding spells were good enough to protect against that sort of treatment.

The distraction was wearing thin – now Liv was starting to worry about her damned chest, and anyway, it wasn't like she couldn't just replace most of the things in it. She had her wand in her mokeskin pouch, along with the signet ring which gave her (rather) limited access to her family's Gringott's account, and a Muggle credit card for true emergencies – her mother had insisted, saying that they didn't even _have_ Knight Bus service in most American cities. They felt it was _entitlement_, and would weaken the moral fibre of American wizarding communities, or something like that.

Unbeknownst to her mother, however, Liv had taken the expedient of secreting away two items of great personal significance in her pouch. One was a little chest, about the size of a jewellery box, in which she kept her rarest and most important potions materials, and of course a little stockpile of bezoars, since Professor Slughorn kept telling that damned story about them at least once a semester – "… and do you know, apparently the book actually said, 'Just cram a bezoar down their throat.'" The second item secreted in Liv's pouch was a bit more troublesome than the first: a 17th Century, basket-hilted broadsword, with a blade two inches across at the base and thirty six and one quarter inches in length, and a curving, skeletal hilt that truly bore out the term "mortuary sword." She could not read the strange writing that twisted up the blade, but she had memorized the translation: "I am the essence of that which separates the two from the one."

Although heavily restricted, and doubtless certain at least to annoy the American customs officials if they were discovered, Olivia could not bear to risk the loss of these two items. She had, therefore, taken the precaution of placing both items in a pouch enspelled with a temporary but quite powerful undetectable extension charm, and acting on the maxim that magical subterfuge was excessively risky where ordinary subterfuge might suffice, had sewn a small bag in place across the opening of the pouch, filling it with Sickles and Galleons so that it might pass as her purse.

Olivia was jolted out of her reverie when she noticed that the witch in front of her had started to enter the fireplace. Green flames lapped up to the witch's waist, revealing the subtle black-on-black pinstripes of her business robe. She turned and faced outward, holding her pass up before her. When the flames touched it, the parchment ignited in a puff of green light. Half a heartbeat later, the flames jumped above the witch's head, and just as quickly she was gone.

The goblin standing beside the fireplace gestured to Olivia to step up on the hearth. The green flames dwindled and died, and no sooner had they turned orange than the goblin pulled a discrete lever, releasing a small handful of floo powder into the firebox and filling it with green light once more. The goblin nodded up at Olivia, and she stepped backwards into the fireplace, holding her pass nervously out before her as she'd seen the previous witch do.

Green flames grew around her, catching at her pass. Before it went up in a flash, Olivia noticed that the writing lit up green, and a hitherto unseen seal appeared at the lower right corner. Half a heartbeat passed, and then the flames reached up over her head. She was filled with a soft tingling as the green fire enveloped her, and the sickening sense of an uncontrolled headlong rush through a very narrow corridor.

For a long minute, the world was black, smelled of soot and smoke, and was filled with the sensation of hot air rushing past. Olivia's stomach turned as she waited for one end or another – either her headlong rush would end very gradually, slowing her until she appeared, standing still, in the fireplace at the end of her journey, or it would end very suddenly when the floo network became jammed. She thought about the feeling of sudden deceleration, and began to feel a little sick. God, what if she were to be sick in the floo after a shutdown? How long would she have to be stuck there, smelling it? How much space was there in here, really?

* * *

><p>As she walked away from the customs desk, Liv realized that she was hanging her head and slouching up her shoulders in shame. Determined not to let them get the better of her, she uncurled, holding her head high. There had been a slight shudder in the floo, in reality a minor hang-up in the system from a misrouted arrival in the same fireplace. The five minutes Liv had spent hanging in nowhere, though, in darkness so full that she couldn't remember which way was up, which was down, which was coming and which going, had completely unnerved her. When you have no way to mark the passage of time but the sound of your heart beating and the susurrus of blood through your ears, five minutes is an eternity.<p>

Liv was altogether flustered when she was ejected normally from the floo, tripping as gravity unexpectedly reasserted itself upon her body. She had fallen out of the fireplace and only just caught herself on the attendant goblin's arm.

Insult was added to injury when the auror working for American customs made a simple pass of his wand over her person, and gone on to interrogate her about the potions ingredients in the little chest in her pouch.

He had made her tear out the false bottom so that he could inspect the ingredients, desperate to ensure that nothing dangerous entered the country without proper registration and cataloging. Her sword, a four centuries old, spell-woven relic of a time when wizards fought in the great wars of the world, dealing death alongside Muggles, was regarded uncritically as it clattered out onto the auror's counter. He nodded at it, and said, "If you don't have a weapons permit, you can fill out the appropriate paper work at that desk over there." He gave a little shrug of his head to show her where it was. "Ask for form 14-B: Registration of an Enspelled Lethal Artifact for Personal Defense. " With that, he had gone back to the important task of ensuring that no unauthorized potions ingredients were smuggled across his borders.

Liv walked away from the encounter with an unshakable feeling of alarm nestled in the back of her mind and a quart-sized zip-top plastic bag jingling with galleons and sickles under her arm.

Logan International Flooport seemed to be nothing more than a series of hallways lined with fireplaces and customs desks. The hallways all branched from a larger central trunk. The walls were glaringly white, as though they were always being scrubbed or repainted to polish away any hint of age or dignity the building might manage to accumulate.

At the end of the high-ceilinged main hall there was a lounge taking up two floors where you could sit, order overpriced drinks, and watch sporting events. Liv wasn't altogether certain why such a thing would be necessary, but assumed it was just another reflection of the Muggle world, jutting into the wizarding world as it tended to do. The obsession with newness and the fear of age seemed to preoccupy the wizarding world of America just as much as it did the Muggle side of the country.

As she ducked in, Liv noticed that one end of the lounge was all windows, and the view through the windows was that of the massive atrium of Logan International Airport, through which she would be exiting as soon as she'd had a moment to collect herself. People were stolidly shuffling through long lines and waiting to be admitted into the terminal, generally looking dissatisfied with life. They seemed oblivious to the colossal expanse of the room, altogether unimpressed with its immense, open architecture.

She looked back at the lounge. The scene was much the same. It was well-arranged, lined with wood veneer panels, floored with plush carpets and comfortable booths, yet people were sitting around and looking agitated as they pored over their newspapers, or clustered around immense globes of crystal, thoroughly unimpressed with the things themselves, but completely engrossed in the scenes of action within them as Quodpot balls zigged and zagged back and forth, exploding here and there.

Liv found a quiet corner booth to slide into, taking a moment to collect herself. She pulled her wand out of her pouch. It was made of vinewood, finished with some sort of red stain, long and sturdy, but not completely rigid, slightly twisty, with a somewhat weathered look. The core was of dragonheart. Garrick Ollivander, the old wandmaker, had liked to tell children that these cores were dragon's heartstrings. It was a little disgusting, Liv reflected. They weren't heartstrings like you played on when you wanted to win someone's sympathies. They were heartstrings like tightly corded muscle from a heart made strong by beating throughout the duration of a dragon's lifetime.

It was, Liv was fairly certain, the only wand core that required the donor to die before it could be harvested. She felt a little disgusted at that necessity, and feared what it might say about her. Then again, dragonheart wands were said to only choose those worth of carrying a dragon's life with them, or that's what she had heard. Ollivander had told her that it was the wand that chooses the wizard, although that may well have been just another little fairytale to keep a magical moment from seeming dark to a small child.

Shaking her head to clear it of these depressing thoughts, Liv took her wand in hand, balancing it delicately on the edge of her forefinger like a conductor's baton and tracing out the fickle lines needed to renew the undetectable extension charm on her mokeskin pouch. The fur-covered bag slowly contracted, no longer betraying any hint of the deadly weapon or precious collection of herbs and other ingredients it held inside.

Liv gathered her things, and stopped next to one of the crystal spheres to rummage for her baggage claim ticket. In the sphere, which had a diameter nearly as large as Liv was tall, the action was focused on a player rising rapidly through the air on his broom to intercept what appeared to be a quaffle in mid-flight. Hooking his arm, he spun quickly and lobbed the ball to another player who hovered over an exceedingly large cauldron resting atop a high pillar. As this was going on, a set of hand-scribed numbers in gold ink counted down from three in the lower right-hand corner. The player who caught the ball slipped slightly, reseated himself, and was just raising his hand to drop the ball into the pot when the golden 1 changed to a bright red 0. The leather ball exploded in his hand with a brilliant flash. Unbalanced, the wizard spiraled down towards the field, accompanied by the mixed sounds of laughter and jeers from the crowd.

"Senseless," Liv pronounced with a shake of her head, walking out to collect her trunk and exit through the Muggle airport.


End file.
